lead generation best practices: construction marketing association

ConstructionMarketingAssociation.org

© Copyright 2014. Construction Marketing Association. All Rights Reserved.

Lead GenerationBest Practices for Construction

Building Expertise™

Lead Generation Best Practices for Construction

Leads are important!

With both commercial and residential construction down by 50% in many

markets from pre-recession highs, sales lead generation has never been

more important to marketers targeting construction decision makers,

whether construction firms or building product manufacturers. This fact is

reinforced by a recent Construction Marketing Association survey—2011

Construction Marketing Outlook—which ranked Lead Generation as one

of the top priorities for next year.

So to understand where construction marketers are with lead

generation—a baseline—we conducted another survey and share the

results here, along with some checklists of key lead generation types,

and an evaluation of the two largest lead services in the construction

market—McGraw-Hill Dodge Reports and Reed Construction Data.

Finally, we identified several other construction lead sources that tend to

specialize in regions, type of construction project or service offerings.

survey says

A recent (November 2010) survey about lead generation in construction

conducted by the Construction Marketing Association via SurveyMonkey

posed the following questions:

1. What lead generation techniques or sources do you use in marketing to the construction industry?

2. Which lead generation technique/source has shown the best results for your company?

3. Which lead generation technique/source has shown the worst results for your company?

4. Which lead generation technique/source do you foresee using more in the future?

5. What type of company are you?

/// Construction Marketing Association | Lead Generation Best Practices for ConstructionPAGE 1

Regarding the types of lead generation techniques/sources used, Sales

Prospecting ranked highest with 70% of respondents using, followed

by Trade Shows/Events (60%), Internet Registrations (58%), Email (57%),

Search Engines (45%), LinkedIn (44%), Advertising (40%), Publicity

(38%), Social Media (37%), Direct Mail (34%), Per-Per-Click (PPC, 23%),

Training Programs (21%), Reed Construction Data (17%), other Lead

Services (15%), and Telemarketing (13%). Dodge Reports, Networking via

associations and Referrals tied at 11%. Specification services like ARCAT,

CSI and e-specs were used by 4% of respondents.

PAGE 2 /// Construction Marketing Association | Lead Generation Best Practices for Construction

Regarding which lead generation technique/source has shown the best

results for your company, Direct Sales ranked highest at 23%, followed by

Referrals (19%), Trade Shows (13%), and Website SEO (11%). Networking

events and Reed Construction Data tied at 6%, followed by Dodge,

other Lead Services, Email and Direct Marketing at 4%. Other mentions

included Telemarketing, PPC, Jobsite Visits, LinkedIn and Channel

Promotions at 2%.


Regarding which lead generation technique/source has shown the worst

results for your company, Advertising led all at 28%, followed by Trade

Shows and Yellow Pages at 11%; Pay-Per-Click and Direct Mail at 9%.

Telemarketing and Dodge Reports followed with 4% of mentions.


Regarding which lead generation technique/source do you foresee

using more in the future, not surprisingly Social Media led all at 30%,

followed by Internet (12%), Email (9%), Telemarketing (6%); Association

Networking, PPC, Referrals, Dodge, and Training Programs and tied at

4% each. Reed Construction Data and Trade Shows follow at 2%.


Regarding type of company, 19% of respondents were building materials

(manufacturers or suppliers), followed by 18% commercial construction,

15% construction service providers, 13% architectural engineering,

11% residential construction, 9% for both construction equipment and

remodeling, and 2% construction technology or property management.


so many Leads, so LittLe time

So what are the sources and types of sales leads? Last month’s

Construction Marketing Association webcast, Measuring Marketing

Results – Best Practices for Construction identified over 70 types of

marketing measures, many of which are sources or types of leads that

fall into such categories as traditional, internet and social media.

Following are many sources of leads by category.

Traditional Lead Sources

Direct mail/Email lists

Online databases (e.g. D&B)

Customer service telephone surveys

Outbound telemarketing

CRM systems

Customer database entries

Trade show card readers

Trade show registration lists

Association member lists

Association events

Trade print advertising reader response

Secondary market research (published, publicly available, e.g., internet)

Primary market research

Syndicated market research (similar to Lead Services)

Internet Lead Sources

Website registrations

Contact/Conversion Forms

RSS registrations (typically email address)

Pay-Per-Click (PPC, SEM, e.g., Google Adwords)

Web Reverse IP Address Services (Lead Advantage, Leadlander)

Google Alerts

Urchin Tracking Modules (UTMs)

Email service provider reports

Social Media Lead Sources

LinkedIn Connections (email addresses, InMail)

LinkedIn Groups (post discussions, offers)

LinkedIn Companies

Facebook Friends, Fans, Groups, Likes


Twitter Followers

YouTube Subscribers

WeFollow.com

URL Shortener (e.g. Bit.ly offers tracking)

Bookmarking (Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon)

Radian6 (identify bloggers, etc)

ConstruCtion-speCiFiC Lead serviCes

The Big Dog Lead Generators: McGraw-Hill Construction

Dodge and Reed Construction Data

By Paul Deffenbaugh

I recently investigated the project lead generation programs of two service

providers for a large manufacturer in the northern Midwest. The company

wants to provide leads to its sales force so that its product can be specified

in commercial construction projects at an earlier stage. The goal is to get in

at the planning, not bid stage to take the competitor out of the equation.

I thought I would share what I learned about McGraw-Hill Construction

Dodge (Dodge) and Reed Construction Data (RCD), the two largest lead

generators in this area. Most of this information is readily available from

their websites or by talking with sales representatives, but I also interviewed

a couple of people who had used both systems. It’s hard to assess these

services because access to the databases is highly restricted – and rightly so.

During my research, I found that surprisingly, there was an incredible lack of

real information about these providers. With most products or services,

you can go online and find someone has done a comparative review and

other users have posted comments to flesh out the information. The

only real source of information about these services are from Dodge

(dodge.construction.com) and RCD (reedconstructiondata.com)

themselves. For any person doing an analysis, those are hardly reliable

sources of information. I have heard, however, of individual companies

that have done extensive testing of both services. One company

completed a 200-page analysis for its internal use. The manufacturer

I represented may choose to take that next step.

First, a disclaimer. I worked at Reed Business Information, which owns RCD,

as editorial director for the residential construction media. During a few

months of my tenure, my group reported up to RCD. I sat in on meetings


with RCD, but I can honestly state that no information I learned from

those meetings – if I could even remember it – is included in this report.

How tHey work.

The most difficult aspect of generating my report was identifying true points

of differentiation. For the most part, Dodge and RCD operate in the same

manner and provide the same services, although they compete quite

viciously. (More on this later. See the subhead, “Tough Competitors.)

Both providers pull much of their data from public sources. By law,

public projects and many private projects must be advertised. With

that information, the services can identify architects, building owners,

municipalities, engineering firms, planners and other groups that are

planning or putting out to bid commercial projects. The quality of the data

is entirely dependent on the relationship with those people preparing the

work. Both Dodge and RCD offer incentives to their providers to make it

worth their effort to report the data, such as giving them free access to the

database. Dodge has a long-term relationship with Associated General

Contractors (AGC), which enables their reporting. RCD has a new

partnership with American Institute of Architects (AIA) and leverages

the work it’s subsidiary, RSMeans, does in gathering cost information.

The companies gather this information by employing phone banks of

researchers who call their sources to get updates on projects, secure

plans, and identify new projects coming down the pipeline.

All that data, combined with plans, goes into a massive database,

which is organized by project. The database is highly searchable and

deep with information. Here are some of the kinds of data that is

included in these projects.

• Planningstage,suchasproposed,architectselection,schematics,bidstage,etc.

• Category,suchascommercial,industrial,etc.Bothofthosewillhavesubcategories.Forcommercialitmayincludemedicaloffices,retail,parkinggarages,etc.

• Typeofwork,suchasnewconstructionoraddition

• Contracttype

• Location

• Companyinformationforplanners,generalcontractors,majortrades,etc.

• Materialsspecifiedincludingcompanynamesandmodelsifappropriate

• Valueoftheprojectandoftenvalueofmajorsubcontracts


Both companies provide an online interface that gives users access to

the databases so they can query for their particular needs. And both

companies provide written reports based on selection criteria that are

delivered to your company. Pricing is the major motivation for restricting

selections, since few companies can afford the cost of full access -- or

have the need for all the leads.

Generally, leads can be coordinated in one of three ways.

1. Both Dodge and RCD will link the leads they provide with a proprietary customer relationship management (CRM) software for an individual company

2. Deliver the leads to a lead manager

3. Distribute leads directly to sales people

In addition, both Dodge and RCD are leveraging the strength of these

services to build other businesses, such as consulting, costing data,

economic data, and more. For our purposes, we are looking only at

lead generation services for building product manufacturers.

vitaL statistiCs

diFFerentiation and priCing

It should be clear by this point that the differentiation between Dodge

and RCD is obscure at best, especially to outsiders. In conversation with

sales representatives for both companies and users, I asked this very

specific question.

Both companies provide deep information on a great breadth of

projects. My user sources tell me that the differentiation often comes

within particular material areas. One service may be better for interior

decorative products while the other have a stronger electrical product

information base. The type of differences may vary from the types of

products to the company names included, which would be essential if

you are searching for competitors.

PAGE 10

McGraw Hill dodge reports reed Construction dataYear Founded 1903 1975Markets Served US and Canada US and CanadaHeadquarters New York Norcross, Ga.online interface McGraw-Hill Construction Network Reed ConnectPrint reports Dodge Reports Reed Bulletin

/// Construction Marketing Association | Lead Generation Best Practices for Construction

RCD claims to have a stronger group of reporters on private projects.

Their claimed strength is built on the back of RSMeans, which is a

company that gathers unit costs for building product materials all around

the world and has significant interaction with architects who specify those

products. RCD uses that information and those relationships to update

their information on the harder-to-identify private construction projects.

Both companies quietly admit that their civil and public databases are

nearly redundant. The reason is simple. Because, by law those projects

must be advertised, finding them is quite simple. In addition, the

companies are close on their pricing, which is loosely based on a cost

per lead. The best example for pricing that I could find was that RCD’s

fully-loaded database would run a company about $60,000 per year. (I’m

sure that could go higher if the company were to download more leads,

but the governing factor may be not how many leads you can capture,

but how many you can handle.)

RCD recently debuted a new interactive program called SmartSpecs

(www.smartprojectnews.com), which aims to make the interface for a

company more focused and deliver leads quicker and more easily. The

same company with this lead program could see a fee of approximately

$12,000 per year. Entry fee for the service comes in at $110 per month.

Dodge does the same kind of thing through their hands-on customer

service, which they claim as a huge differentiator. By using what they call

TargetLeads to pinpoint references and carefully selected keywords, they

can bring the costs of lead generation down considerably. As a rule, of

course, the cost per lead remains constant. The savings comes in the

number of leads and their quality.

Dodge also prices reports on a 10 and 20-pack basis. For $59 per month,

you can get 10 reports covering 2 geographic regions that provides the

main details of a project. (Here’s a link to a sample report.) The 20-pack

version costs $79 per month.

RCD has similar kinds of reports at similar costs. These should not be

compared to having access to the database, which you can query. That

is a much more robust approach that gives greater control and deeper

information to the user.


tougH Competitors

RCD and Dodge have been fighting head to head since 1975, when RCD

was founded. (The company was originally called Construction Market Data,

but Reed Business Information purchased it in May 2000 and changed the

name.) Recently, the battle on the commerce field moved to the court system.

In October 2009, RCD filed suit in federal court, accusing Dodge of 11

counts of misconduct, which includes corporate espionage. The basis for

the suit is the claim that Dodge used subterfuge and false companies to

steal RCD’s trade secrets.

In October 2010, RCD put out a press release stating Dodge admitted in

court that it paid others to access the RCD database, which is supposed

to be available only to customers. The company also claims Dodge

shared what it learned with its sales staff.

Dodge responded by denying it has unlawfully accessed RCD’s trade

secrets or shared them. They counterclaim that RCD itself hired a

consultant to access the Dodge database.

This is pretty good spectator sport, and the stakes are high. In October, a

judge dismissed three of the counts, but 8 remain. At this writing, the suit

has not gone to trial, and the outcome is still up in the air.

FinaL word on tHe Big dogs

For manufacturers looking to increase their leads in this tough economy,

Dodge and RCD provide great services. Selecting between them is difficult.

From the outside, their services are more similar than dissimilar and border

on being commodities. When you differentiate yourself on the quality of your

reports and the level of your service, which is easily duplicated by a well-

funded competitor, you find yourself battling for inches rather than acreage.

On the inside, the user experience will be different for each company.

Those firms that have signed on to one service, without testing the other,

are doing themselves a disservice. The other might be better suited to

your needs, but you won’t know until you try it. And that’s the problem.

Would you really want to switch lead generating services (or add a

duplicate service) at a time when you’re desperately trying to control costs?

The company I’m working with will now step in and do individual trials

with each service to see which is the best suited for them.


Other National Lead Services

BidClerk.com http://www.bidclerk.com/index.html

TheBlueBook.com http://thebluebook.com/

ConstructionWire.com http://www.constructionwire.com/

NationalContractors.com http://www.nationalcontractors.com/membership.htm

Free listing; $69.95/month for all leads ($59.95 for 12 months); public

project focus although list private and residential; limited project detail

Free listing; covers top metros; various advertising levels determines

lead invites; integrated bidding services; affiliated with Dodge Reports

BuildCentral brand name; claim 194,000 projects with focus on

private and commercial

Commercial and residential, Federal and State;

starting at $24.99/month; directory

Regional Lead Services

Construction Data Corporation; commercial project focus;

Eastern (US) seaboard, Texas, Michigan; offers free trial

Northeast focus (NY, NJ, CT, PA, DE); public and private sectors;

source directory

Eastern seaboard; public and private projects; offers free trial

Western US incl. CA, AZ, NV, CO, UT, WA, OR; weekly project

list from $84/month for county or metro

Partner with AGC (Associated General Contractors of America) for local coverage; SupplyLink LEADS for BPMs; regions incl. North Central, Southwest region, Rocky Mountain region, Oklahoma; integrated bidding and project management

California; public projects

Michigan and Ohio; planning room, CSI specs

CDCnews.com http://cdcnews.com/

Construction Information Systemshttp://www.cisleads.com/

ConstructionJournal.com http://constructionjournal.com/

ConstructionLeadJournal.com http://www.constructionleadjournal.com/

iSqFt.com http://isqft.com/ AECleads.comhttp://www.aecleads.com/

CNCnewsonline.com http://www.cncnewsonline.com/

otHer Lead serviCes

While Dodge Reports and Reed Construction Data are most certainly

the big dogs of lead services, there are a number of other services

that compete with regional focus, construction project types, service

options and pricing models. Following are some other national lead

services, regional lead services, local contractor/remodeler lead services,

government lead services and other lead services including equipment

lease and architectural specification directories.


Residential Contractor/Remodeler/Handyman Lead Services

$99 enrollment fee; $7-55 per lead depend on size;

non-exclusive distribution

Free listing; $29.95/month all leads with bid capabilities;

consumer reviews

Free listing; $39-$399/month lead reports; directory;

banner ads, RFQs, etc.

Manage websites and online marketing for small contractors;

$69 monthly fee with $447 website set-up; advertising options

Residential construction and remodeling; manage internet,

direct mail and advertising for monthly fee

Consumers pay membership fee; ratings of home services

rank high in search; paid advertising options

ServiceMagic.com http://www.servicemagic.com/

HandyAmerican.comhttp://www.handyamerican.com/

ConstructionWork.com http://www.constructionwork.com/

Yodle.com http://www.yodle.com/

ContractorLeads.com http://www.contractorleads.com/ Angie’s Listhttp://www.angieslist.com/angieslist/

Government Projects

Database of government projects in US and Canada for 89,000 agencies;

industry solutions for architectural engineering and construction supplies

Electronic bidding software; claim 70,000 public government agencies

Federal Business Opportunities including construction projects

Onvia.com http://www.onvia.com/

BidSync.comhttp://www.bidsync.com/

FBO.gov http://www.fbo.gov/

Other Lead Services

Equipment lease database of UCC filings; used by construction equipment

and capital equipment manufacturers and suppliers

Manufacturers directory and architectural product specifications;

target architects and engineers

Catalog and directory of architectural products and specifications

from McGraw-Hill Construction

Equipment Data Associates http://www.edadata.com/

ARCAT.comhttp://www.arcat.com/

Sweets Network http://products.construction.com/


Leads smeads. wHat sHouLd i do now?

Sales Leads in the construction category are no simple tactic. There are

many options for generating sales leads or purchasing sales leads from one

or more services. Construction firms tend toward the latter (purchase),

and may integrate with bidding and related services. Building product

manufacturers will likely use a combination of sources, from traditional,

internet and social, to purchased leads if their products are specified by

architects or engineers. With construction project activity at historical

lows, there is no question the sales lead generation is more important

than ever. Likewise, what you do with sales leads, lead management and

measurement, becomes just as important. The holy grail is tracing a sales

lead to a sale and measuring financial return on investment, which can be

difficult due to long sales cycles, or channels of distribution.

The Construction Marketing Association

(CMA) provides professional development

and training, resources and information,

networking and recognition to marketers

in the construction industry. CMA sponsors

the annual Construction Marketing STAR

Awards, and the Certified Construction

Marketing Professional (CCMP) program.

Full information on the association is

available on the website at

www.ConstructionMarketingAssociation.org.

The site links to the award-winning

Construction Marketing Blog with marketing

news, resources and related content,

and the association’s Twitter, Facebook,

Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn pages.

Questions? Contact Neil Brown at 630-868-5061.

© Copyright 2014. Construction Marketing Association.

All Rights Reserved.


http://www.constructionmarketingassociation.org/

http://www.constructionmarketingblog.org/

https://twitter.com/constructmarket

https://www.facebook.com/ConstructMarket?v=info

https://plus.google.com/101277062019129567769/about

http://www.youtube.com/ConstructMarket

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=3064537&trk=hb_side_g

aBout pauL deFFenBaugH

Paul Deffenbaugh is Chief Content Officer of Deep

Brook Media, which develops content and strategies

for leading construction brands. With more than 20

years in the residential construction. His background

includes editorial director for the Residential

Construction Group at Reed Business Information

for Professional Builder, Professional Remodeler, Custom Builder,

Housing Giants, and HousingZone.com. In addition, Paul was co-founder

of the Remodeler’s Guild, a national remodeling company.

Deffenbaugh has appeared on CNBC, Wall Street Reports, and CBS This

Morning. He is a three-time winner and five-time finalist of the coveted

Jesse H. Neal Award for editorial excellence, and has been recognized

by the American Society of Business Publication Editors and the National

Association of Real Estate Editors. Paul earned a degree in Philosophy

from Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Ind. and has a Master of Fine

Arts in creative writing from George Mason University in Fairfax, VA.

aBout neiL Brown

Neil M. Brown isChairman of the Construction

Marketing Association, and Chief Marketing officer

of Construction Marketing Advisors. He has been

CEO of numerous marketing consulting and creative

agencies for the past 15 years, managing some of the

biggest brands in the construction sector including

Emerson Electric, USG and Bosch Tools. Prior to the agency-side, Brown

was a brand manager at Reliance Electric and Ideal Industries. Later he

served as CMO of an architectural metals manufacturer. Neil is a frequent

speaker, author and contributor to Advertising Age, Marketing News, BtoB

magazine and many others. In 2011 he published the book, Tools of the

Trade: Modern Marketing for Construction Brands. In 2009, her authored

Branding Best Practices: A Guideto Effective Product and Business

Naming. Neil earned an MBA from Northern Illinois University, and a

BS-Marketing Cum Laude from Southern Illinois University.
